liberal policy for them. But the notion was at once pushed aside by
Mounier, and obtained no hearing. And the division of powers, which he
substituted, was rejected in its turn. They would not admit that one
force should be checked and balanced by another. They had no resource
but general principles, to abolish the Past and secure the Future. By
declaring them, they raised up an ideal authority over the government
and the nation, and established a security against the defects of the
Constitution and the power of future rulers. The opponents of the
Declaration fought it on the proposal to add a declaration of duties.
The idea was put forward by the most learned of the deputies, the
Jansenist Camus, and the clergy supported him with energy. The
Assembly decided that a system of rights belonged to politics, and a
system of duties to ethics, and rejected the motion, on the morning of
the 4th of August, by 570 to 433.

This was the deciding division on the question of the Rights of Man.
After some days, absorbed by the crisis of aristocracy, the distracted
and wearied Assembly turned again from the excitement of facts and
interests to the discussion of theory. A new committee of five was
appointed to revise the work of the committee of eight, which dealt
with the entire Constitution.

On August 17 Mirabeau reported their scheme. His heart was not in it;
and he resented the intrusion of hampering generalities and moralities
into the difficult experimental science of government. He advised that
the Constitution should be settled first, that the guide should follow
instead of preceding. The Assembly rejected the proposals of its
committees, and all the plans which were submitted by the celebrities.
The most remarkable of these was by Sieyes, and it met with favour;
but the final vote was taken on a less illustrious composition, which
bore no author's name. The selected text was less philosophical and
profound, and it roused less distant echoes than its rival; but it was
shorter, and more tame, and it was thought to involve fewer doubtful
postulates, and fewer formidable consequences. Between the 20th and
26th of August it was still further abridged, and reduced from
twenty-four propositions to the moderate dimension of seventeen. These
omissions from a document which had been preferred to very remarkable
competitors are the key to the intentions of the National Assembly,
and our basis of interpretation.

The original scheme